


hold a word to my ear like a conch shell

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: ASoIaF / Game of Thrones fics [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bastardy, Canon Compliant, Ficlet, Gen, Identity Issues, Mother-Son Relationship, Oneshot, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Parent Death, Pre-Canon, or lack thereof, well it's not death but absence with lack of any explanation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22385224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Jon Snow looks more like his father than any of his trueborn brothers, and there are times he takes pride in it, that they call him bastard but they can never call him cuckoo. Other times it seems like a cruel jape and a paltry trade-off, that he lays claim to the Stark look when he can never claim the name. And other times, it fills him with a deep sorrow words cannot express, that he has not a bit of his mother in him. There are times when he wonders if he evenhada mother, or if he simply sprung into being from Eddard Stark alone.
Series: ASoIaF / Game of Thrones fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586470
Kudos: 18





	hold a word to my ear like a conch shell

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem “The Only Worlds We Know” by Michael Lee.

Jon Snow looks more like his father than any of his trueborn brothers, and there are times he takes pride in it, that they call him bastard but they can never call him cuckoo. Other times it seems like a cruel jape and a paltry trade-off, that he lays claim to the Stark look when he can never claim the name. And other times, it fills him with a deep sorrow words cannot express, that he has not a bit of his mother in him. There are times when he wonders if he even  _ had _ a mother, or if he simply sprung into being from Eddard Stark alone.

But he must have had a mother, someone who carried him for nine moons. Whoever she was, noblewoman or tavern slut, Jon has to believe he inherited something from her beyond bastard’s blood. His father never breathes a word of her, not even if she’s dead or alive.

On Jon’s worst days, he will examine his face in the mirror for hours, searching for all the ways it does not quite match his father’s. He has the Stark gray eyes and long face, but perhaps the shape of his nose is not as sharp: a legacy of his mother? His hair is a shade darker than his father’s, if he looks at it in a certain light. Surely his lean figure came from a woman and not a man.

Would Lady Catelyn feel more warmly towards him, if he did not resemble Lord Stark so, if he did not accentuate her own failure to deliver Stark-looking sons but instead resembled the woman who tempted Eddard Stark away from his legendary honor?

Is it just as well that Jon has nothing of a woman he can never know, or would it ease the ache to have something – anything – of her?

Jon can never know.


End file.
